Chapter 9
Before I went to the reservation, I went back to the motel to check on Iris. She was up and dressed and eating some pastry that she got free for guests in the motel restaurant.
I said, “Good morning. I’m about to go out to the Seminole reservation. You want to go with me?”
“Yeah.” She jumped up. “I can finish eating in the car.”
“No, you can’t. Finish and then we’ll go. It’s not a rush.”
She gobbled the sweet roll and washed it down with orange juice.
We left the room and headed north in my car.
The Seminole reservation wasn’t what it used to be when the Glades were more difficult to access and before the casinos and tax-free stores supplied every tribal member with a middleclass income. Electricity and phone lines ran out there now. In place of chickees, concrete block ranch style houses or doublewide mobile homes dotted the roads. Satellite dishes popped up in the yards like giant mushrooms. Beside each home sat a big shiny pick up or an SUV, plus mountain bikes and ATVs. The cawing and hooting of waterfowl and the drone of insects had been joined by the hum of air conditioners.
Iris said, “This is way disappointing. I thought it’d be more authentic.”
“Times change.”
But some Seminoles were reluctant to join modern life fully: Christian Osceola was one of those. That’s why I was certain that if I found the reservation road, I’d be able to find him. I wound around some one-lane dirt paths until I encountered a traditional chickee built about fifty feet from the path, but with electrical and phone lines running to the open-air structure. I stopped to listen. A throbbing base and a crescendo of heavy metal guitar came crashing from the chickee. I turned off the ignition and got out and walked to the structure. Iris walked behind me. From the center of the chickee hung a large glossy poster of a Seminole warrior in traditional dress, holding a rifle, and below him the words NEVER DEFEATED. Below that, a middle-aged, shirtless Seminole with graying hair tied back in a ponytail was in the lotus position in the center of the chickee and seemed to be trying to absorb the music that was reverberating from speakers set at each post of the chickee – quadraphonic. I yelled, “Hey!”
His left eye opened a crack and he smiled. He picked up the remote control at his feet and clicked. The sound died. He slowly rose and shook himself free of the trance. He came and jumped down from the chickee. His voice was soft, breathy. “Buck, how’re you doing? Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Been working. Still working. How ‘bout yourself? You look healthy.”
“Yeah, not bad for my age. I tell everyone it’s because I still live the traditional way.”
“With some exceptions.” I nodded at the sound system.
He grinned. “Of course, the nutritional supplements I take have something to do with it. Say, are you going to introduce me to your lady?”
“This is Iris Dabney. Call her an intern of sorts. Iris, this is Christian Osceola.”
They shook hands.
Christian said, “Iris, you look like you have a little Native American in you.”
She said, “Yeah, Dad says I’m an eighth Cherokee.”
“Those damn Cherokees. They’ll breed with anyone. Your hair and cheekbones give it away.”
I said, “Do you mind if I ask how much your stipend is monthly?”
“That’s a tribal secret, but I’ll give you a range. Somewhere between $2,000 and $5,000. There’s actually a variation based on age and responsibilities.”
“Not too bad.”
“I personally don’t need so much because I live pretty simply.”
“So, what do you do with it? Hide it in the swamp?”
“Come here. I’ll show you.” He hopped back onto the chickee floor and helped me up. We went over to a small desk on which rested a plugged-in laptop. He lifted the lid and the screen lit up. “At first, I just put it into a savings account, but pretty soon I had so much there that I thought I should do something with it. So, I looked into investing. First, I bought some CDs, then some bonds, but those are pretty slow growth. So, I opened a mutual fund account. I selected half a dozen stocks and put in a thousand a month. Been doing that for about three years.” He clicked some buttons and a graph popped onto the screen. “Here’s the distribution.”
I scanned the chart. It had six bars representing various kinds of stocks: equity growth, balanced, indexed, international, real estate and money market. I quickly calculated that the total was worth over $50,000.
“Of course, I still have the CDs, bonds and savings account. So, Buck, I’m becoming a wealthy dude.”
“I’ve always thought of you as well-to-do.”
“That’s because you compute life differently than most people. Anyone who has all he wants is well-to-do.”
“Looks like you have more than you want.”
“The mental activity keeps my brain sharp. I’ve even done a little e-trading, but I haven’t got the trick of it yet. Just about breaking even.”
“How ‘bout real estate?”
“Got the whole Glades. But the tribe invests, too. We’ve got foreign investments now – hotels, resorts. I think the council is looking into cruise lines and sports franchises next. We’re thinking of naming the team the Palefaces.”
I laughed and said, “Things change.”
“And stay the same. So what brings you out here. I know you didn’t come just to talk finance.”
“No, I’m working a case and it’s got me stumped.” I explained about the boys, their car in the canal and how they just disappeared. “So, what could have happened to them?”
He squatted, folded his arms and thought. Finally, he said, “You know, the Glades are huge, but eventually we know most of what happens here. If they had been grabbed by a cougar or a gator, we would’ve probably found out about that. We have an interest in which animals have become man-killers. So, my guess is that whatever happened to them was caused by man. We don’t mix with a lot of the local people. I know quite a few of the permanent, longtime residents, but there’s also the migrant stream. We pretty much stay away from that. Some nasty people in that business.”
“How does that work?”
“Well, typically, crew chiefs who own buses and vans and trucks, haul in the migrants from the camps. The migrants work in the fields all day, pay the crew chiefs for transportation and sometimes for food and water. The pickers get paid by the piece, so take-home pay depends on how much they pick. The farm supervisor, the foreman or boss, weighs each person’s take and doles out the money accordingly. If the migrant camp is owned by the farm, rent and utilities are deducted from the pay. It’s a system that works pretty well to give Americans all the fresh vegetables they want at a low price. Sometimes a boss or a crew chief will take advantage of the illiterate or poorly educated migrants.”
“What about these corporate farms?”
“It’s the same system. To get the work done, the corporation has to rely on crew chiefs and bosses like everyone else. To maintain a full-time migrant labor force would be much too expensive. So, in a way, the crew chiefs and bosses control the brutality of the system.”
“Exactly. And there’s the problem.” I pulled out my photocopy of the South Florida road map. I showed him the blue-marked route that the Toyota Samurai had taken, all the way to a point approximately five miles north of Sunniland. Using a protractor, I had penciled in a circle with a radius of twenty miles centered on the site of the accident. I had shaded the circle yellow. “I figure that the fate of our boys happened somewhere within this circle. South is nothing but swamp and the hamlet of Sunniland. North is the migrant farming community of Immokalee. West and east is part of the Big Cypress reservation and the Everglades. Do I have that correct?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s say they were dazed and wandered south. I think that is the route that would most likely have gotten them discovered, so I doubt they went south. If they went east, they would have been in the Everglades; their greatest danger there would have been animal predators.”
“Not likely unless they fell into a nest of alligators. Big cats and bears would shy away from humans. By the way, there are some farms to the east.”
“West?”
“Then they would’ve headed our way. We would’ve tried to ignore them, but we would’ve spread the word that strangers were in the area. We would’ve known they were here, just like a tourist that took a wrong turn. But no such thing has been reported.”
“North?”
“Immokalee has a sheriff’s station, so if they had made it to Immokalee, they could’ve gotten help.”
“The bodies of two migrant workers were found in the canal where the boys went in.”
“There’s one scenario you left out.”
“What’s that?”
“That they didn’t go in any direction before something happened to them. Something happened, and then they were removed from the area.”
“That would explain their disappearance. But I keep coming back to the migrants because that’s the most obvious factor within the circle. So, here’s what I would like you to do, and you can do this much faster than I can because you know the ropes. Find out which migrant camps have the worst reputations for brutality.”
“All right. How much time do I have?”
“The sooner the better.”
“Two days?”
“Ok, two days.”
“Say, Buck, how’s that woman you brought out here – the blond? She’s a bright one.”
“Cyndi?”
“Right, Cyndi.”
“She’s fine, but we broke up.”
“I can’t believe you let that one get away.”
“To be honest, Chris, she broke it off. I didn’t want to.”
“You should get her back.”
“It takes two to do the dance.”
“You aren’t giving up, are you?”
“Let’s just say that I’m letting it cool a bit before I try to warm it up again.”
“Ok, brother, I don’t mean to pry. Just concerned. I know how much you liked her.”
Iris and I left him with his assigned task and rushed back to Naples on an errand of my own.
During the trip, Iris said, “That was interesting. I didn’t realize Native Americans were living so well.”
“The Seminoles and other Florida tribes have learned how to market and found a niche industry with casinos. They do consulting work with other tribes to show them how it’s done. You know the Seminoles are the only tribe that was never defeated by the United States.”
“I knew that.”
“That gives them a leg up on other tribes psychologically.”
“Buck, who’s this Cyndi that Christian mentioned.”
“Your ears are very big.”
“Well, who is she?”
“Someone I fell in love with, but it didn’t work out.”
“Is she crazy?”
“No, in fact, she’s a lot like you – very single-minded and independent. The two of you would probably get along well.”
“You should introduce us.”
“Well, you and I haven’t been friends very long.”
She smiled and said, “You know, you’re easy to like and a lot smarter than the first impression I had.”
“Cyndi said something like that once.”
“Oh, I know we’re going to be friends.”
I found a print shop, with the help of its staff designed a flyer, had them scan Nano’s and Paulie’s photos. Underneath their pictures was written Have you seen either of these young men? They disappeared off Highway 29 around December 7. $500 REWARD for information leading to their whereabouts. The information was reiterated in Spanish below that. At the bottom was my cell phone number. I had 200 flyers printed.
I made sure Iris called her mother that evening. I talked to Ms. Channing also to assure her that Iris would be home soon.
* * * *
The next day, Iris and I passed out a few flyers in Naples in restaurants and service stations along the highway and at interstate highway entrances. We left a few in Sunniland. The rest we distributed in Immokalee at any store or business that was open and even to groups of people standing curbside.
Iris seemed to relish the work. I think she had really begun to think of herself as my assistant, even though at every opportunity I reminded her that she wasn’t really – she was just a teenager that I was keeping out of trouble.
“Trouble, trouble, boil and bubble,” she said and laughed.
She was very intelligent, quick on the uptake. Given half a chance and few weeks’ study, she’d be giving me advice. But she was still a teenager.
End of Chapter 9
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